But tucked into a bill larded with more than 8,500 earmarks is more than $300,000 for apple fire blight — with U.S. Rep. Vernon Ehlers' and Hoekstra's names attached — as well as $1.4 million for an offshore wind project requested by Hoekstra.

Ehlers also voted no on the bill, calling it irresponsible in a time of crisis.

Thanks to Ehlers, the measure contains $3.8 million to move the Grand Rapids Amtrak station.

Both defend these earmarks as worthy endeavors, even as critics deride items like $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii and $190,000 for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Wyoming.

It is a venerable game on Capitol Hill: One man's prize is another man's pork.

Ehlers defends each expenditure tied to his name, insisting he would not sign on if they were undeserving.

"I have been very light on earmarks over the years," Ehlers said. "I wouldn't support it if it weren't real good and real important."

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He said $500,000 for Grand Rapids-based Our Community's Children and after-school programs for at-risk middle school and high school students is a good investment in the future.

"Prevention is much, much better and much, much cheaper than dealing with kids after they go astray," Ehlers said.

Lynn Heemstra, executive director of Our Community's Children, said the money is anything but wasteful.

"This is going directly to kids. When we are talking about increasing graduation rates and increasing potential for life, that's what this money is for."

Ehlers also defended asking for part of the cost of moving the Amtrak station from Wealthy Street SW and Market Avenue to the nearby Rapid Central bus station on Grandville Avenue.

The funds are for the first stage, laying track from Wealthy Street to a lot adjacent to Rapid Central.

"This is a longstanding problem that should have been taken care of long ago," he said.

As for "improved fruit practices," the money is for research on combating an apple pest called the codling moth and for sugar beet pest control and creating a strain of black bean resistant to mold.

"This is not a giveaway," he said.

Hoesktra said money for research into apple fire blight probably sounds peculiar to outsiders.

But he considers it no laughing matter to West Michigan growers who lose trees to the bacterial disease, which makes leaves and limbs look as though they have been burned.

"If you take a look at Michigan's economy in the last year, one of the few things that grew was agriculture. One of the things crippling that industry is fire blight," he said.

Hoekstra also defended the demonstration wind turbine in Muskegon Lake.

"It is one of the alternative energy opportunities that people have identified. We are a windy place, especially at the lakeshore."

"If you capture one-tenth the wind potential in Lake Michigan, that is equivalent to something like 30 nuclear power stations," he said.

Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group, counted 8,570 "Congressionally designated projects" in the bill, totalling $7.7 billion, up 3.4 percent from last year.

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain made earmarks a major campaign issue, insisting he would put a stop to the practice. Alaska's infamous $400 million "bridge to nowhere" became the poster child for the cause.

Ehlers said making sure the sponsors are known — a requirement in most cases — is a good way to strip pork from the bills.

But even that has limits.

"That has gotten rid of the most egregious ones," Ehlers said. "But frankly, some members of Congress don't care if someone in Grand Rapids doesn't like what they do."